STRAND — AI-driven hair health for Afro and textured hair

For you

Everyone has a theory about your hair

Your mum, your cousin, the brand, the girl on your feed with the ring light. All of it confident, most of it contradictory, none of it about your hair. STRAND replaces the theories with your own record.

1 Products

Scan the bottle before you buy it

An ingredient list shouldn't need a chemistry degree. Scan a product and STRAND tells you two things: whether it contains anything you've flagged as an allergy or sensitivity, and whether it suits your hair — scored against your own characteristics and logged reactions. No more buying on a recommendation and finding out on wash day.

Ingredient breakdown for a scanned product

Scan a productFlagged ingredients, and whether it suits your hair.

2 Professionals

Find someone you can actually trust, and book them there and then

Finding a professional who genuinely knows this hair is its own ordeal. Recommendations from people whose hair is nothing like yours. A salon that says yes on the phone and then panics when you sit down. A stylist who looks confident on camera and has never been trained on textured hair in their life.

Every professional on STRAND is reviewed before their profile goes live — training and standard of care, not follower count. Browse by discipline and location, ask what you need to ask in live chat, and book in the app.

Vetted professionalsChecked before they appear. Live chat, then book in the app.

3 Your passport

Then turn up already known

You know the appointment. The first hour goes on explaining the relaxer years, the reaction you had once, the protective styles, what you did and what you didn't. Or you don't explain it — because you're tired of it, or because you know how it will sound.

Your passport goes with you — but only if you say so. Nothing is visible to a professional without your explicit consent, you choose exactly what they see, and you can withdraw access at any time. They read it before you arrive, and you get to just sit down.

A STRAND passport shared with a professional

Messaging a professional inside the STRAND app

Your passportShared only with your explicit consent — and every view is logged.

4 Your record

Remember what actually worked

Life gets busy and the details go first. Which product you used the month your hair felt best. How long that style lasted. What you dropped, and why. Log each wash day and style as you go, with photos, and STRAND keeps all of it — so in six months you're checking, not guessing.

Wash day logged step by step in the STRAND app

Products and technique recorded for the session

Progress tracked against a stated hair goal

Wash day and style journalLogged as you go — so in six months you're checking, not guessing.

5 Your health

Your hair starts on the inside

You can spend years buying product for something no product can fix. Upload your blood work and STRAND explains what your results mean for your hair — which markers matter and what's low. Then it builds a nutrition plan around those deficiencies, with meal ideas and recipes. Not a diet. Dinner.

Blood marker results explained for hair health

Meal ideas and recipes built around flagged deficiencies

Blood work, read properlyWhat your results mean for your hair — and the meals that put it right.

Products, professionals, your passport, your record and your health — one app. Most people are only ever chasing one of the five.

Joining as a member

How this works

Registering is free. Before STRAND can tell you anything useful it needs to know your hair — six questions you answer yourself, in a few minutes, no appointment needed.

1

Register Free

Name, email, password. Two minutes, no card. Registering on its own opens the directory, so you can browse and book a vetted STRAND Pro straight away — before you pay STRAND anything.

2

Tell STRAND about your hair Required to unlock

Six questions, answered by you, in the app. Diameter, surface texture, density, porosity, elasticity and scalp condition — each one written so you can answer it honestly about your own hair without needing to be a trichologist.

Why STRAND asks instead of guessing. Everything the app tells you afterwards is built on these answers, so they are asked directly rather than inferred from a curl chart. No appointment, no waiting, no gatekeeping.

Not sure on an answer? Every question carries a plain-English explainer and a "not sure" option, so you are never forced to guess at something you cannot see.

Want it checked properly? Optional, not required. Book a vetted STRAND Pro from the directory and update your answers from what they find — porosity and elasticity in particular are easier to judge with a professional.

Changed since you answered? Update any characteristic at any time. STRAND keeps the history, so a change in porosity after colouring shows up as a change rather than overwriting what came before.

3

Your blood test Optional

This one isn't a gate. You can skip it at sign-up and add it whenever you like — STRAND works without it.

What it adds: your nutrition and diet plans, plus every blood-linked insight. Those stay locked until a report is on file. Already have results from the last 6 months? Upload them. If not, book it in the app — the same directory lists doctors who can run your bloods.

4

STRAND unlocks, and you subscribe

Once your six answers are in, choose STRAND or STRAND+. This is the first and only point you pay STRAND, and your record is already there waiting for you.

Book through the app and you get our partner discount codes — 10% to 20% off with vetted professionals, whether that is an appointment or your bloods. You pay those professionals directly; STRAND itself costs nothing until step 4.

Membership

Two ways to keep your record

STRAND £9.99/month Everything you need to stop guessing

Scan any product — flagged ingredients and whether it suits your hair
Log an allergy or sensitivity once, checked on every scan after that
Vetted professional directory, with in-app booking and messaging
Nothing is shared without your explicit consent, and every view is logged
Wash day and style journal, with dated progress photos
Blood work stored and tracked, with retest reminders
What your results mean for your hair, in plain English
Meal ideas and recipes built around your own deficiencies

STRAND+ £14.99/month The record, plus the room

Everything in STRAND
Ongoing in-app access to your practitioner during an active treatment plan — ask a follow-up without booking again
A treatment plan built to encourage, not to read like a clinical checklist
Community forum, live events and a vetted resource library
Brand directory — vetted offers and discounts
Priority access to new features and invitations to cohort studies

Both plans start the same way. You choose at step 4, once your six answers are in.

Join as a member Takes you to sign-up at mystrand.co.uk

STRAND Pro · £12.99/month

Everything a client can't tell you, before they sit down

The passport is the reason professionals join — a dated record of a client's hair and health that no consultation form comes close to. It is only ever visible with the client's explicit consent, and they can withdraw it at any time.

1 The passport

See what no client can give you in ten minutes

Wash days. The products actually on their shelf, and the ones they quietly stopped using. Colour history and hair characteristics. Medications, supplements and every allergy they have logged. Blood markers and nutrition. Every previous appointment — who they saw, what for, and what was done. Structured, dated, and shared with you before they arrive.

Until now the client has been your only source, and clients edit. Not out of dishonesty — because they have been made to feel judged before, or because nobody remembers what they used in March. That is how a reaction ends up happening in your chair.

A client's passport as a professional sees it

Logged allergies, medications and supplements in the passport

Colour history and hair characteristics in the passport

Previous appointments and what was done, in the passport

The passportShared by the client, with their explicit consent.

2 New clients

The client list you would have chosen

It takes a particular kind of client to log every wash day, upload their blood work and pay monthly to keep a record of their own hair. That is who is on STRAND. Enquiries land in the app, you talk in one thread, and you book — and the person on the other end is invested in the outcome and far more likely to follow the plan you set. Not someone chasing whatever went viral last week.

A new client enquiry arriving in the STRAND Pro inbox

New client enquiriesEnquiry, conversation and booking in one thread.

3 Between appointments

Stop working blind for eight weeks at a time

You give the guidance, they leave, and you find out how it went at the next appointment — if there is one. Set a treatment plan on STRAND and, with the client's explicit consent, you can see it happening: what they are using, how their scalp is responding, whether they are following it. You adjust before the damage is done instead of after.

Tracking a client's treatment plan between appointments

Treatment plansProgress visible between visits, with the client's explicit consent.

4 Offers and campaigns

Earn between the appointments, not just during them

Create an offer on your services, or on the products you stock, and promote it across STRAND. You pick the days it runs.

It goes in front of people who are already logging their wash days and working out what to buy next — a small, highly engaged audience that has proved it invests in its hair. That is a line of revenue that does not depend on filling another chair.

Create an offerServices or products, promoted across the app on the days you choose.

Better information in, better outcomes out — for their hair and for your reputation. And you are listed among checked professionals only: every application is reviewed before a profile goes live.

Join as a professional Apply free. You only pay once you're approved.

STRAND Brands · £99/year

Your product, explained by someone they already trust

Brand copy bounces off this audience. They have been promised too much, too often, by companies that never formulated for their hair in the first place. On STRAND your product is introduced by the platform — not by you.

1 Trusted status

Become a STRAND Trusted Brand

Every brand is checked before it appears, and the shelf carries no unverified sellers. For a shopper who distrusts the category by default, that is the difference between being considered and being scrolled past — and every new launch has an audience already inside the app.

Your brand pageA checked profile on a shelf with no unverified sellers.

2 Advertising that teaches

The advert explains how to actually use it

Placements are matched to real hair characteristics, so your product reaches the people it was formulated for. Then STRAND does the part no ad ever does: it explains what the product will do for their hair specifically, and how to use it properly — grounded in the guidance from How To Love Your Afro.

That is a third party teaching your product, not a brand making claims about itself. Being recommended and being advertised are not the same thing.

A placement matched to hair characteristics before it goes live

Build a placementMatched to hair characteristics, and reviewed before it goes live.

3 Placements

Choose where you appear, not just that you appear

Build an offer in the app in minutes, then pick the surface it runs on: the home page, the wash day page, the product page, or the professionals' dashboard.

So a conditioner can meet someone mid wash day, on the screen where they are deciding what to reach for next — and a salon-size order can meet a stylist on the dashboard they already work from. B2C and B2B from the same account.

Choosing which surface of the app an offer appears on

An offer shown on a product page in the app

Create an offerPick the surface it runs on, and the days it runs.

4 Live proof

Watch it work, while it works

No waiting on a monthly report. Watch it land live: shelf adds, saved codes, taps, clicks and wishlists, exportable for internal reporting. You will know whether it converted before the next campaign is booked.

Real-time performanceShelf adds, saved codes, taps and clicks as they happen.

Consumers are not your only buyer. STRAND Pro professionals are on the same platform, so one listing also reaches the stylists and clinicians their clients listen to.

Join as a brand £99/year platform access. Promotion days booked as you need them — no minimum commitment.

About the founder

I begged my mum for a relaxer when I was fourteen

I was convinced straight hair was the entry fee for being seen as beautiful. What followed was years of damage, and a much longer stretch of hiding — wigs, weaves, chemical treatments, all of it armour. It took me a long time to admit I wasn't styling my hair. I was avoiding it.

When I finally started again, I found out how little real help there was. Not because the knowledge doesn't exist, but because it lives in group chats, comment sections, camera rolls and appointments with people who were never trained on hair like mine. I was told it was stress. I was told it was just dryness. I brought photographs to appointments so I would be believed.

So I wrote the book I needed at fourteen. How To Love Your Afro was published by Bloomsbury and has sold over 6,000 copies. I started Texture Talks because people needed to hear it out loud. I built Team Texture because the products we were being sold were not made with us in mind.

But a book cannot remember your last wash day. A podcast cannot tell your dermatologist what you have been using for six months. And no amount of good advice fixes the fact that every single one of us walks into every appointment starting from nothing.

What I actually want

My vision is bigger than an app. Afro and textured hair has never been properly documented — not by healthcare, not by the industry that sells to it. That absence is not an oversight, it is the reason. It is why we are dismissed at the point of care, why claims get made that nobody checks, and why our hair is treated as a beauty preference rather than a health category.

STRAND changes what exists. Every wash day logged, every record shared by consent, every blood panel tracked builds the first real body of evidence for textured hair — owned by the people it describes, not extracted from them. A community that walks into any room holding proof. Professionals credentialed properly, and visible because of their training rather than their following. Brands answering to evidence instead of budget.

Paige Lewin — Founder

Common questions

Before you join

The things people ask most often.

What is STRAND?+

STRAND is an AI-driven hair health app for Afro and textured hair. You answer six questions about your hair when you join, and STRAND keeps a dated record of how it changes over time — what you used, what you wore, and how it responded. Guidance is drawn from the science in How To Love Your Afro by founder Paige Lewin, published by Bloomsbury.

Who is STRAND for?+

Three groups. Members with Afro and textured hair who want to stop guessing which products and routines work for them. Hair professionals who want a real record of a client's hair before they sit down. And hair care brands who want their products in front of people whose hair actually suits them.

Do I need a blood test to use STRAND?+

No. Blood work is optional and you can skip it at sign-up, then add it whenever you like. STRAND works without it.

What it adds is your nutrition and diet plans, plus every blood-linked insight — those stay locked until a report is on file. The app's guidance runs primarily on your hair characteristics, not your bloods.

Do I need to see a professional before I can use STRAND?+

No. There is no consultation gate. You answer six questions about your hair yourself when you join, and the app unlocks on those answers alone.

Booking a professional is optional and always has been useful rather than required. Porosity and elasticity in particular are hard to judge on your own hair, so if you do see someone, you can update your answers from what they find. The vetted directory is there from the moment you register, free, if you want it.

Does STRAND use curl typing?+

No. STRAND does not use curl typing systems, because they describe what hair looks like rather than how it behaves. Two people with visually similar curl patterns can have completely different porosity, density and elasticity — and it is those measurable characteristics that determine what a product will actually do.

STRAND records those characteristics directly instead, by asking you about each one.

Can my hair professional see my records?+

Only if you explicitly consent, and only for as long as you allow it. Your hair passport is never visible by default. Every view is logged so you can see who looked at what and when, and you can withdraw access at any time.

How much does STRAND cost?+

Registering is free and there is nothing to pay until your six hair answers are in. STRAND membership is £9.99 a month. STRAND+ is £14.99 a month and adds ongoing in-app access to your practitioner during an active treatment plan, a community forum, live events and the brand directory.

Professionals pay £12.99 a month for STRAND Pro. Brands pay £99 a year for platform access, with promotion days booked as needed.

What is the difference between STRAND and STRAND+?+

STRAND is the record: product scanning against your own profile, allergy and sensitivity checks, the professional directory with in-app booking, your wash day and style journal, and blood work tracking.

STRAND+ adds the room around it — you can ask your practitioner a follow-up during an active treatment plan without booking again, plus the community forum, live events, vetted resource library, brand directory offers and priority access to new features.

Do I have to pay before I can see anything?+

No. Registering takes two minutes, needs no card, and opens the professional directory straight away so you can browse and book a vetted STRAND Pro before paying STRAND anything. You only choose a plan once your six answers are in.

How do I get a discount on an appointment or blood test?+

Book through the app and you get partner discount codes — 10% to 20% off with vetted professionals, on your assessment and on your bloods if you choose to add them. You pay those professionals directly.

Welcome to STRAND

The guessing
ends here.